PROVOST, JAMES H.

Priest, Canon lawyer, and university professor. b. Washington, D.C., Oct. 16, 1939; d. Takoma Park, Maryland, Aug. 27, 2000. The third of four children born to Oscar and Mary Provost, James Provost spent most of his formative years in Missoula, Montana, where he attended local schools. After graduating from Carroll College in Helena, Montana, with degrees in philosophy and mathematics, he studied theology at the Catholic University of Leuven and was ordained to the presbyterate for the service of the Diocese of Helena in Leuven in 1963. After a short period as a parish priest, he earned his doctorate in canon law (J. C. D.) at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome with a dissertation entitled Interecclesial Communion in the Light of the Second Vatican Council."

From 1967 to 1979, Provost served as chancellor and officialis of the Diocese of Helena under Bishop Raymond Hunthausen. Active in ecumenical affairs, Provost was a founding member of the Montana Association of Churches and served on the ARC-MONT, the Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue, from its inception. For the last few years before his death, he was a member of the Anglican-Roman Catholic Conversation (ARCIC) for the United States.

Provost was a leading member of the Canon Law Society of America (CLSA) for over thirty years, serving as its vice-president from 1976 to 1977, its president from 1977 to 1978, and its executive coordinator from 1980 to 1986. In 1979, Provost joined the faculty of canon law at the Catholic University of America. He chaired the department from 1987 to 1998 and was the managing editor of The Jurist from 1980 until his death. Provost was also one of the editors of the church order section of the international theological journal Concilium and a member of the board of the Consociatio Internationalis Studio Iuris Canonici Promovendo. In 1991, the CLSA awarded him its highest award, the Role of Law Award, for his contribution to the reform of church law.

Provost saw the great task of canon law in the last four decades of the twentieth century to be translating the ecclesiological vision of the Second Vatican Council, whose sessions he had observed while a student in Rome, into concrete reality. As a result, he approached canon law as an instrument not to exert control over the faithful, but to facilitate the actualization of the Church's self understanding expressed in its theology. For him, the study and teaching of canon law was not a purely academic undertaking, but ministry that was deeply pastoral. For many years, he directed the Canon Law Society's Permanent Seminar, a study group that brought together scholars from various disciplines. This seminar produced several collections of essays including The Church as Communio, The Church as Missio, Official Ministry in a New Age, and Protection of Rights in the Church. To each of these collections, Provost contributed a concluding essay which synthesized the other contributions and projected a vision of the shape of the Church in the future and the challenges, practical and intellectual, to realizing that vision. Provost also made important contributions to the two commentaries on the 1983 Code of Canon Law sponsored by the Canon Law Society of America. He wrote the sections on the rights and obligations of the Christian faithful (cc. 204–231) and the supreme authority of the Church (cc. 330–367) for The Code of Canon Law: A Text and Commentary (1985) and the section on ecclesiastical office (cc. 145–196) for A New Commentary on the Code of Canon Law (2000). Provost also published numerous studies, both scholarly and popular, on such subjects as matrimonial jurisprudence, diocesan administration, rights in the Church, and the governance of the Apostolic See when the see is impeded. Through his writings, teaching, and lecturing, Provost's influence extended well beyond the United States and shaped a whole generation of canon lawyers.

[j. p. beal]